update

[feedback (imported)]

Just an update for those interested. I have been hanging around here it seem forever. I have tried a burdizzo and done vodka injections and still want whats left removed. I have come very close to trying it myself but have decided to follow the advice of those on the board and have a talked to a psychiatrist who is refering me to someone who deals with gender related issues. Hopefully I will finally be able to get this done by a doctor and get it paid for as well. Looks promising. Will keep you informed.

[Littledick (imported)]

Hope it all works out for you, keep us informed.

All the best!:)

[janekane (imported)]

Perhaps this is a suitable time and place for me to add a little to the telling of how I got a safe, surgical orchiectomy in 1986. I consulted physicians until I found ones who were both willing and able to listen to my cancer risk concern and offer useful suggestions, which I successfully followed. The process of my never "taking "No," for an answer from any physician who did not understand Bayesian statistical approaches to effectively avoiding plausible future danger (said danger, for me, being dead from metastatic cancer in the manner of my dad and brother) took me into the domain of a physician who suggested how to go about getting a safe and effective surgically-accomplished orchiectomy.

My method, when a physician informed me that the physician would not help me get the orchiectomy, was to ask the physician to tell me who might help. That led to a collection of doctors who said, "No." And it led, finally, to the doctor who said, "Yes, provided that you never tell anyone that I did the surgery."

How did I find the doctor who did the deed? Part of my method, as I lived in one of the larger cities in the U.S., was going to urologists at hospitals associated with medical schools, physicians who were used to teaching future physicians, and who were decently aware of the realm of theoretical biology, and who had some semblance of a chance to decently understand my concerns.

I now live about a couple hundred miles from the closest such hospital, and am in the process of finding a suitable doctor there for continuing care. By continuing to ask doctors, without giving up, I did finally meet with a doctor whose dad had died following prostate cancer treatment complications, and who had a personal sense of the risk, and who was willing to do the surgery. Because medical doctors are licensed, it has been a simple task to find that some of the doctors who helped me find a way to get my orchiectomy have died of old age.

Yes, I did get and show the instruments (an Elastrator and bands) to the doctor, such that the doctor got the notion that I was very, very serious about getting the orchiectomy.

A few weeks ago, I got a copy of my medical records for the purposes of continuing care in seeking a doctor at the closest medical school affiliated hospital to where I now live. And the records are now decently accurate; they state that I am high-functioning autistic, that I have a cancer gene condition that led to my dad's and brother's deaths, and that I got my orchiectomy as prophylaxis for cancer risk.

I had help in making my decision to get my orchiectomy. Most of a decade earlier, I had worked with a man notably older than me in a local community organization; early in our encounter, he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer that had not metastasized. He was given radiation treatment, he was long divorced and, for strong religious reasons, was not doing sexual intercourse and had no intention of doing same. Nonetheless, his doctors persuaded him that it was better to keep his testicles in spite of his cancer. Well, the radiation did not stop his prostate cancer from metastasizing to his bone marrow. When he had developed serious pain from his metastatic cancer having spread to other tissues, then, and only then, did his doctor(s) decide it was time for his orchiectomy. He went into the local hospital as an outpatient late one afternoon, got his orchiectomy, and was at a community organization meeting a couple hours later, with no noteworthy post-surgical discomfort. He did not have testicular cancer, and a "simple," trans-scrotal orchiectomy was all he needed to have a longer time living with with the pain of metastatic prostate cancer.

When I was in pursuit of my orchiectomy, I also had the story of someone who waited too long for his orchiectomy. That story, a true one, was another of my persuaders.

I live in a world in which the future has not yet happened, and in which choices really are choices such that it is impossible to know for sure what the consequences of any particular choice will eventually be. Therefore, I am unafraid of making mistakes because I find that, as a human brain process, "making mistakes" and "learning" are two contrasting names for the same neurological process, to wit, doing something and learning what happens as a result. To me, the only difference between "making a mistake" and "learning something" is whether someone likes, or dislikes what is learned in the process of making a particular mistake.

Oh, yes, there is one more thing in my medical record that is, I find, accurate. It is this, "He is hyperverbal." ... As I am here demonstrating?

I had one, and only one, real reason for getting my bilateral orchiectomy. I expected getting it would give me a better long-term subjectively-experienced quality of life than otherwise. That expectation was only a guess, and, having gotten my orchiectomy in 1986, have had no way to test what my quality of life would have been without it. It, therefore, remains only a guess that my life has been better than it would have been without my orchiectomy.

To me, the whole of my life has been making guesses and learning what happens, which is always making another guess and learning what happens, and making another guess and learning what happens.

Whatever guess I make, what ever I learn, is always good enough because the guess I make is the guess I make and I learn what I learn

How could life ever be better than that?

Everything I have read on the Archive Message Boards has been, to me, of someone making a guess and describing what was learned.

Perhaps the main learning for me, here, has been confirmation of my lifelong observation that, when someone makes a decision for someone else, one or another form of harm is likely.

[lust-ocd (imported)]

Perhaps this is a suitable time and place for me to add a little to the telling of how I got a safe, surgical orchiectomy in 1986. I consulted physicians until I found ones who were both willing and able to listen to my cancer risk concern and offer useful suggestions, which I successfully followed. The process of my never "taking "No," for an answer from any physician who did not understand Bayesian statistical approaches to effectively avoiding plausible future danger (said danger, for me, being dead from metastatic cancer in the manner of my dad and brother) took me into the domain of a physician who suggested how to go about getting a safe and effective surgically-accomplished orchiectomy.

My method, when a physician informed me that the physician would not help me get the orchiectomy, was to ask the physician to tell me who might help. That led to a collection of doctors who said, "No." And it led, finally, to the doctor who said, "Yes, provided that you never tell anyone that I did the surgery."

How did I find the doctor who did the deed? Part of my method, as I lived in one of the larger cities in the U.S., was going to urologists at hospitals associated with medical schools, physicians who were used to teaching future physicians, and who were decently aware of the realm of theoretical biology, and who had some semblance of a chance to decently understand my concerns.

I now live about a couple hundred miles from the closest such hospital, and am in the process of finding a suitable doctor there for continuing care. By continuing to ask doctors, without giving up, I did finally meet with a doctor whose dad had died following prostate cancer treatment complications, and who had a personal sense of the risk, and who was willing to do the surgery. Because medical doctors are licensed, it has been a simple task to find that some of the doctors who helped me find a way to get my orchiectomy have died of old age.

Yes, I did get and show the instruments (an Elastrator and bands) to the doctor, such that the doctor got the notion that I was very, very serious about getting the orchiectomy.

A few weeks ago, I got a copy of my medical records for the purposes of continuing care in seeking a doctor at the closest medical school affiliated hospital to where I now live. And the records are now decently accurate; they state that I am high-functioning autistic, that I have a cancer gene condition that led to my dad's and brother's deaths, and that I got my orchiectomy as prophylaxis for cancer risk.

I had help in making my decision to get my orchiectomy. Most of a decade earlier, I had worked with a man notably older than me in a local community organization; early in our encounter, he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer that had not metastasized. He was given radiation treatment, he was long divorced and, for strong religious reasons, was not doing sexual intercourse and had no intention of doing same. Nonetheless, his doctors persuaded him that it was better to keep his testicles in spite of his cancer. Well, the radiation did not stop his prostate cancer from metastasizing to his bone marrow. When he had developed serious pain from his metastatic cancer having spread to other tissues, then, and only then, did his doctor(s) decide it was time for his orchiectomy. He went into the local hospital as an outpatient late one afternoon, got his orchiectomy, and was at a community organization meeting a couple hours later, with no noteworthy post-surgical discomfort. He did not have testicular cancer, and a "simple," trans-scrotal orchiectomy was all he needed to have a longer time living with with the pain of metastatic prostate cancer.

When I was in pursuit of my orchiectomy, I also had the story of someone who waited too long for his orchiectomy. That story, a true one, was another of my persuaders.

I live in a world in which the future has not yet happened, and in which choices really are choices such that it is impossible to know for sure what the consequences of any particular choice will eventually be. Therefore, I am unafraid of making mistakes because I find that, as a human brain process, "making mistakes" and "learning" are two contrasting names for the same neurological process, to wit, doing something and learning what happens as a result. To me, the only difference between "making a mistake" and "learning something" is whether someone likes, or dislikes what is learned in the process of making a particular mistake.

Oh, yes, there is one more thing in my medical record that is, I find, accurate. It is this, "He is hyperverbal." ... As I am here demonstrating?

I had one, and only one, real reason for getting my bilateral orchiectomy. I expected getting it would give me a better long-term subjectively-experienced quality of life than otherwise. That expectation was only a guess, and, having gotten my orchiectomy in 1986, have had no way to test what my quality of life would have been without it. It, therefore, remains only a guess that my life has been better than it would have been without my orchiectomy.

To me, the whole of my life has been making guesses and learning what happens, which is always making another guess and learning what happens, and making another guess and learning what happens.

Whatever guess I make, what ever I learn, is always good enough because the guess I make is the guess I make and I learn what I learn

How could life ever be better than that?

Everything I have read on the Archive Message Boards has been, to me, of someone making a guess and describing what was learned.

Perhaps the main learning for me, here, has been confirmation of my lifelong observation that, when someone makes a decision for someone else, one or another form of harm is likely.

JaneKane, did you have testosterone replacemeny therapy after your orchiectomy, or have you done without it?

As for hyperverbal, there's only one thing that shuts me up. As soon as i

know i am loved, all of my mental chattering comes to rest at last. There's only 2 ways to shut me up, either a firing squad, or love me. i talk a lot because i need to be loved.

[janekane (imported)]

As the final "thing" that led to my orchiectomy was concern about my dad's nearly having died from prostate disease and its treatment when he was 51, my purpose in getting the orchiectomy was to minimize testosterone; therefore, I did not have testosterone replacement. The university endocrinologist who did offer hormone therapy to me prescribed a Premarin and Provera approach until I got adequately into the upper age range typical of female menopause, and then, for osteoporosis issues, put me on a bisphosphonate prescription.

Because I find cancer prevention to be vastly more effective, when it is possible, than cancer treatment often is, my approach to testosterone, based on a very careful study of my family cancer risk history, led me to reject the idea of testosterone replacement therapy, as it would have undone the final, and ultimately decisive, purpose of my orchiectomy.

Yes, I am about as transgendered as I suppose anyone is. However, being also autistic, I tend to be very resistant to social norms which I experience as abusive, and am profoundly resistant to social norms that I experience as terribly abusive.

My subjectively experienced inner quality of life increased dramatically when testosterone and its effects parted company with me.

Not only have I done without testosterone replacement therapy, I have run from it as fast as I can.

Someone else, who is not transgendered as I am, might greatly miss testosterone about as much as I greatly do not miss it.

I do wonder, once in a while, whether my being hyperverbal was what allowed me to get my orchiectomy, and whether, were I not hyperverbal, I would have died from cancer much as my dad and brother did???

[lust-ocd (imported)]

"

My subjectively experienced inner quality of life increased dramatically when testosterone and its effects parted company with me.

"

how so?

[janekane (imported)]

"

My subjectively experienced inner quality of life increased dramatically when testosterone and its effects parted company with me.

"

how so?

Testosterone, much like other "sex hormones" apparently work in part through activating or inactivating some of the "switch genes" that used to be thought of as "junk DNA" because they did not code for messenger RNA during the days when the sole function of DNA was coding messenger RNA that generated protein synthesis in cellular cytoplasm. It took years of studying genetics for folks to figure out that there had to be control mechanisms to limit making proteins and to increase making proteins according to the needs of a cell for purposes of cellular homeostasis.

Well, I identify, according to social norms, as inwardly much more female than male, and that, combined with my being autistic has led some folks to treat me, as I have stated it elsewhere, "like stinking putrid filth." However, my innermost sense of self continually informs me that such people have been badly hurt and have not been able to resolve their hurts, and end up unwittingly scapegoating me as though that sort of psychoanalytic transference would actually resolve their unresolved hurts.

During the 34 or so years that I lived with apparently typical male testosterone levels, I had much greater difficulty avoiding responding to subjectively experienced abuse from other people without doing what such people tended to deem as some form of retaliation. For myself, I tend to agree with the late psychiatrist, Martin Cooperman, that reciprocal retaliation is a defeating process, both socially and personally, and I seek to avoid defeating myself and my life through such processes.

Avoiding doing things that other people seem to me to have regarded as the "tit-for-tat game" that I find drives sadly much human conflict was much easier for me prior to puberty and after my orchiectomy than during the time while I was bouncing around with apparently typical male testosterone levels.

Both of my parents had studied biology, though that was not either of their college majors, and I had access to a formidable home library during my childhood. Well before puberty, I had read about the usual effects of testosterone on people with one X and one Y chromosome, and had recognized that testicles were optimally placed if they were supposed to be a temporary aspect of XY human experience. Among my family's library collection was the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (purportedly the most scholarly encyclopedia yet) and it was amply endowed with much of the relevant biology and sociology, nineteenth century style, data that helped me to understand that I was presented with a choice as to how long to allow testicles and me to share one human body.

I recognized, before I learned to talk in words, that I did not, and probably would never, fit social expectations usually assigned to people who are of XY chromosome form.

I find my life works best when I am able to maximize the ways I am helpful to others and when I am able to minimize the ways I am hurtful to others. The effects of testosterone, for me, were making it harder to be helpful to others and harder to avoid being hurtful to others. Having no better theory or notion or fantasy, I have a tentative model of this which involves testosterone switching on genes that resulted in the making of cell proteins that made being helpful more difficult and being hurtful less difficult.

That was, to me, somewhat distressing, though not unmanageably so. In the absence of "normal" testosterone levels, the effort I had to invest in managing what were, to me, undesirable effects of "normal" testosterone have become available for doing what I find is more desirable and useful.

However, I do not wish my life had been other than as it has been. My wife and I do have a biological (home-made) child, and that child, now an adult, is worth far more than the cost of my managing the personally-undesirable effects of testosterone.

[lust-ocd (imported)]

as well as making you more helpful to others, and less tit-for-tat kind of angry, did castration make you more emotional and more loving?

[feedback (imported)]

The loss of T definately made me more emotional and more I would say loving. I find it much easier to put others needs ahead of mine now. I am not so self centered and a lot slower to get angry.